Thursday, 12 January 2012

What Every Crafty Teacher Needs!

If you love to teach and you love to make your own teaching resources or refine existing ones, then you are a crafty teacher! We have the best jobs ever because it is therapeutic to be creative, the students definitely appreciate your efforts especially if they were a part of the creative process and best of all, it makes teaching and learning fun!

There are certain things that a crafty teacher cannot live without (maybe, I'm exaggerating) :) But in my nine yeas of teaching, I have found a few handy-dandy must-haves that I cannot imagine myself doing without...

Storage Space - If you don't have much horizontal space, then use lots of shelving and stack-able drawers to create all of the vertical spaces you need. I also use over-the-door hangers to hang some of my pocket charts.

A Laminating Machine - It does not have to be large or heavy-duty. Mine is light and portable. I use it at school and take it home for the Summer break. I laminate classroom posters, certificates, my card games, fold-able cut-outs, signs, pictures, bulletin board labels, and write on-wipe off activities. And of course, all laminators use pouches. I tend to use the 9" x 11.4" pouches for the letter-sized sheets of paper.

Mechanical Pencil Sharpeners - For both art time and regular paper and pencil tasks. It seems like I have some chronic pencil point breakers on my hands... or is it that they want them to break so that they can get to sharpen them? I can't tell. This is the X-Acto school heavy duty sharpener which was designed by teachers. That's right, teachers. They last very long if you follow the #1 rule: no crayons and no plastic coated pencils. So once your students stick to the regular pencils for this, they will have sharpened pencils which leads to neater writing and less time fiddling with manual sharpeners.

Sticky Stuff - I use glue, double sided tape, mounting tape and a glue gun. For light sticking or heavy bonding, do not limit yourself to only one type of adhesive method. There are also the non-sticky methods of bonding - using staplers, florists' wire, Velcro, and fasteners. This is the strongest mounting tape you'll ever find... it's exterior mounting tape by Scotch but I use it for hanging up my bulletin boards. The really hold up well, I cannot complain!

Once, you have all of the materials you need, then the easy part is over, the hard part is finding the time to create all of the things that are on your do-do list! Good luck!

5 comments:

Hi!My name is Heather and I work for Worth Ave. Group. We’re currently holding a contest for K-12 teachers to win grants for their schools, and iPads or iPods for their classrooms. If you’re interested in participating, feel free to email me or visit the link I’ve posted below.Have a great day!http://www.worthavegroup.com/giveaway/voteforteachers@worthavegroup.com

I'm a fellow graduate of UTT, & I am most definitely a crafty teacher. I believe in the 4th R which is Art. With that said... Can you pleaseee tell me where you purchased the laminating machine, the pencil sharpener & where did you get the erasers that can be used with the lanyards? Thank you

Hi! It's always nice to meet another Trini blogger! I like having art as the fourth R (I never heard it like that before, love it). I get everything from Amazon because I'm in Tobago so my choice of products here is a bit limited :( If you click on the picture of my laminator and the electric sharpener it'll take straight to where I got them on Amazon. The sharpeners on the lanyards in this post http://ow.ly/t3miA, I got at the Ten Dollar Store in Scarborough.

About Me

As a Caribbean primary school teacher, I share my unique classroom with the world through this blog. Readers step into my class through the pictures, articles and classroom samples of games and lessons used in my class.
I have been teaching since 2005 at the std. 4 primary level in Trinidad and Tobago.
I am particularly interested in sharing my own personal lesson plans, tests and activities. Teachers need to share ideas and support each other because in doing so, we help to educate our students and develop ourselves as teachers. Technology is ever evolving and we as teachers should get on board with it, collaborate and keep up to date with this new age that we live in. Our students belong to this technological era and we must embrace opportunities to learn from each other in this global community.
I also love to express my creativity in the classroom. I am a bit of a craftster . So I'm always cutting, gluing or making something... a game, a chart, a learning center, etc. So, teachers and parents, feel free to stop by and see what's new at Nyla's Crafty Teaching!